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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Fischer’s Incredible Win Streak

I was looking through some old issues of Chess Review magazine the other day and came across a couple of articles on Bobby Fischer’s incredible 20 game winning streak starting on December 2, 1970 with a win over the Argentine player, Jorge Rubinetti in the Palma Interzonal.After defeating Rubinetti, Fischer mowed down Wolfgang Uhlmann, Mark Taimanov, Duncan Suttles, Henrique Mecking, Svetozar Gligoric, Oscar Panno, then scored 6 straight match wins over Taimanov and another 6 straight over Bent Larsen and, finally a win over Tigran Petrosian before he lost the 2nd game of their match. He went on to defeat Petrosian, who had a reputation as being one of the toughest players in the world to defeat, by the lopsided score of 6-1/2 - 2-1/2. In the Interzonal Fischer posted a score of 18-1/2 – 4-1/2 finishing 3-1/2 points ahead of Robert Heubner, Bent Larsen and Yefim Geller.It was hardly fair that Fischer’s phenomenal score overshadowed the 21-year old Heubner’s success in the tournament .Heubner started the tournament a “mere” IM and finished ahead of, Uhlmann, Taimanov (5th - 6th), Portisch and Smyslov (7th- 8th), Gligoric and Polugayevsky (9th -10th), Mecking and Panno (11th -12th) followed by, Hort, Ivkov, Minic, Suttles, Reshevsky, Addison, Matulovic, Naranja, Uitumen, Filip, Rubinetti and Jiminez.Quite a feat! Here is the game that started it all.

Fischer’s opponent, Jorge Rubinetti (born 31 March 1945) won the Argentine Championship four times (1971, 1982, 1988, and 1991) and played eight times for Argentina in Chess Olympiads (1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1980, 1982, 1988, and 1992). In the 1970’s he was one of Argentina’s top players.